Rory Bremner says the coalition government has been “almost a comedy no-go area” because of the lack of regular political comedy series on TV.
“Nobody has been tracking them regularly week in week out,” he said following a panel discussion at Ad Week Europe.
“When Spitting Image was around people knew who Kenneth Baker, Norman Fowler and Leon Britain were. They essentially found out who they were because they were on Spitting Image each week.”
“That’s one of the facets of the disconnect between the public and the politicians, because they don’t know who half of them are they don’t really follow it and it hasn’t been made part of their agenda by comedy programmes talking about it.”
Bremner contributed to Spitting Image, which finished its final series in 1996. His last regular political comedy series was Bremner, Bird and Fortune, which aired its final full run in 2008. The show was followed by three one-off mini-series culminating in an election-themed show broadcast in the run up to that year’s vote.
The impressionist and comedian said the forthcoming election was the most fascinating he’d followed because politicians were increasingly unable to keep up with how the electorate was changing.
“Politics now is grassroots – it’s petitions and groups like 38 Degrees and it’s Avaaz, and that’s what’s engaging everyone on social media.
“I don’t think Westminster gets it. Westminster didn’t get the Scottish referendum at all and there’s a danger it’s not getting what’s going on around the country.”
He said the proposed debates would help his half-hour BBC2 post-election shows, Rory Bremner’s Election Report, as they were focusing people’s minds on the theatrical aspects of the election.
“It will concentrate the public’s minds as much as anything else. It’s television and it’s theatre and therefore it’ll be one of the big set pieces of the election so naturally people will remember the debates just as they remembered the [Scottish] referendum debates.
“We’ll watch that very carefully ands we’ll do bits about it I’m sure.”
